August, 2013

The countdown to UFC 164 has begun and so we feel it is fitting to watch UFC’s signature Countdown mini documentary show before tonight’s championship pay per view event. This episode features two of the night’s biggest fights.

First, the lightweight title main event rematch between champion Benson Henderson and challenger Anthony Pettis is looked at through the eyes of both fighters. Learn more about Pettis’ rough child hood and adolescence and hear why Henderson is confident he’ll avenge his 2010 defeat to “Showtime.”

In the second part of the Countdown to UFC 164, heavyweight submission wizards and former champions Frank Mir and Josh Barnett finally lock horns in a fight that makes us want to party like it’s 2005. Some fans want to see who will get the better of grappling exchanges between Mir and Barnett but you should watch and listen to some of their pretty hilarious insults of one another and decide who will has the trash talk advantage. Spoiler alert, Mir is allegedly “a dick” and Barnett is an insecure fat kid who never grew up.

(We had no idea what picture to use for this post, but this one seems to work nicely. Be sure to check out Meerkatsu’s shop for plenty of other awesome jiu-jitsu artwork.)

Are “the experts” really more knowledgeable than anyone else in terms of predicting who will win a fight?That’s debatable, to say the least. Today we’re bringing in Adam Touchet – a college football blogger and the most casual of casual MMA fans – to see how his predictions hold up against what will actually happen on Saturday night. Read on for his picks, follow him on Twitter, and check out more of his work at what is possibly the least pretentious college football blog on the Internet, BattleOfTheSun.com.

I’ve spent my tiny broadcasting and show-business career trying to prove that just because you’re on television with a microphone it doesn’t make you an expert. What makes a guy who doesn’t even play a sport an “expert” at it, and what makes the “predictions” of the broadcasters presenting a sporting event to the masses any more valid than its rabid fan base?

In a world of barbarous blitzkriegs and surreptitious submissions, seasoned referee Mario Yamasaki is the epitome of thinking on your feet. Having reffed over 400 fights in the UFC, Strikeforce, WEC, EliteXC and Pride Fighting Championships, Yamasaki has been in the cage with the best fighters the world has to offer – and tried to keep them safe in the controlled carnage that is professional cage fighting. CagePotato caught up with Yamasaki earlier this week and we asked him about everything from controversial stoppages to being accosted by Joe Rogan. Here’s what one of MMA’s best referees had to say.

CagePotato: How long have you been an MMA referee?

Mario Yamasaki: I started around 1992 at local shows in Brazil.

CP: What first captivated you about MMA and is that what lead you to your current profession?

MY: I started doing Judo back in 1968, so the mat was my home. My father had 14 studios in São Paulo and when I was either 19 or 20 years old I thought that I was a great fighter because I use to train with the Brazilian National team in Judo and could kick a lot of people’s butt. When I met Marcelo Behring I got controlled on the ground like I never had before, so I was intrigued with that situation and instead of walking away I said, “Let me learn that so I can become even better than I am.”

From the beginning, I had an advantage against other students because of my background in Judo so I became one of the best students he had. So was my brother, so we started helping him in his private classes so we could learn more and faster. As far as the refereeing part, my father & uncle went to 5 Olympic games as referees and I learned from them.

Whether or not he’ll admit it, Clay Guida hates being an underdog. It isn’t that the featherweight doesn’t enjoy proving people wrong – he does.

It’s the underestimation that bothers him. Most of his UFC wins have come over opponents who were favored over him before he broke them down and beat them. Even before his UFC career began back in 2006, Guida’s opponents were regularly favored over him.

The assumption that he is an “over-achiever” that has to defy our low expectations just to win smacks Guida like a backhanded compliment time and time again. He’s too polite to get visibly angry when the term has been brought up but in the past, but he’s made it clear to this writer that he doesn’t think of himself in that way. After about a decade of “over-achieving,” Clay would prefer if we simply started referring to him as the elite MMA fighter he truly is. On Saturday, Guida will once again be considered the underdog when he fights former featherweight title challenger Chad Mendes.

Like Guida, Mendes is a wrestler, but he is a more decorated amateur one. Like Guida, Mendes is happy to go wild and throw strikes on the feet, but the Californian has been putting people out with his shots. Both men are obviously in the same weight class, but Mendes would appear to be the more physically imposing, stronger fighter.

Mendes’ only career loss was a shocking one to division champion Jose Aldo. Since that fight, Mendes has won three straight fights by knockout. At some point, in some way, every successful fighter must be a giant in his or her own mind. And in his mind, Guida is the clear favorite in his UFC 164 match up with Mendes.

“Chad is a great wrestler,” Clay admits to me one afternoon a month ago from his New Mexico training camp.

“But we are going to show him what Midwest wrestling is all about. It is a whole different beast. It is just scraping, driving non-stop, relentless and winning scrambles.”

Former King of the Cage multi-division champion Tony “Kryptonite” Lopez picked up his first win in his past five contests at a KOTC event yesterday, submitting Andenilson Clementino (yes, that’s his real name) with a rear-naked choke. And that is where the good news ends.

You see, it turns out that Clementino was “mad-dogging” Lopez’s wife backstage before their fight, and believe it or not, Lopez didn’t take too kindly to it. So after securing a rear-naked choke midway through the second round, Lopez decided to teach Clementino a lesson in respect the Babalu Sobral way, by refusing to release the choke even after his opponent had tapped and referee Mike Beltran intervened. Even worse, when he finally decided to let go of the choke, Lopez proceeded to finish things off with a completely unnecessary hammerfist to his downed opponent before walking away.

Not since Mike Kyle vs. Brian Olsen have we seen such a blatant disregard for both the unified rules of MMA and the safety of a fellow fighter, but don’t worry, because Lopez had his reasons, you guys. Or so he tells MMA Prime’s Aaron Tru in a post-fight video which we’ve thrown after the jump.

It looks like there’s once again trouble a’ brewing between UFC president Dana White and UFC HOFer/lughead Tito Ortiz. If you recall, the beef between these two got to such a boiling point back in 2007 that Spike TV aired a special hyping up a boxing match between the two (one which never came to fruition, of course). And while it seemed that White and Ortiz had repaired their relationship for long enough to have Tito get beat into retirement, Ortiz’s recent signing with Bellator has reopened the trash-talking floodgates.

Things really kicked off when Ortiz compared DW to a slave master during a recent interview with Sportscenter:

I thought slavery was over a long time ago. It’s just one of those things where you can’t trust a word the man says. And when you can’t do that, how can you work for him? When you work for a person and they’re badmouthing you no matter what, how can you work for them? When you apologize for the things that did happen and he still goes behind your back and says things about you, for no reason at all. Dana’s thing now is bullying and he is one of the biggest bullies in the business. He’s a big bully. One of these days, karma, it always come back around.

It’s hard to argue with Tito’s comparison when looking at the facts. As we all know, slaves regularly received compensation packages totalling upwards of $250,000 for their work in the fields, as well as top notch medical care whenever they came down with a bad case of “cracked skull.” In addition, it is a well known fact that all slaves drove Rolls Royces to and from their million dollar summer homes.

Being that White is slightly more aware of what gets said about him in the media than the average President of a billion dollar corporation, he responded with the vitriol of a “Ben Affleck is the new Batman” Reddit thread at the Fight Night 27 media scrum on Wednesday.

Court McGee won a grueling split decision over TUF: Smashes winner Robert Whittaker. And Dylan Andrews, after getting thrown around for two rounds, knocked out Papy Abedi in the third round but claimed in the post-fight interview to have damaged his shoulder. Attentive viewers might have noticed that Andrews couldn’t put his arm through the sleeve of his shirt after the fight— never a good sign. But, officially, the Commission has yet to disclose any specific injuries he may have suffered.

We’ll admit to skipping over the very first fight on yesterday’s Fight Night 27: Condit vs. Kampmann card — a lightweight scrap between Abel “Killa” Trujillo and Roger “Fuck it, Dude, Let’s Go” Bowling — in our aftermath piece this morning, but not because we missed the fight and not because we planned on using it as a prime example for another article about potential rule changes in MMA. In my eyes (and therefore all of CP’s because BG is out of town. MWAHAHAHAHA!!!), there was simply no controversy to be had.

Trujillo threw two knees. The first was legal; to the chest. The second was not; it hit Bowling square in the jaw. In fact, the second was about as blatantly illegal a strike as you could ask for. When Bowling was deemed unable to continue, we assumed he would be awarded the victory via DQ, as was the case when Luiz Cane illegally kneed James Irvin’s eyeball through the back of his skull at UFC 79. When the ref informed Trujillo that the fight would be declared a NC because the knee wasn’t “blatant,” we scratched our heads a little, but knew that intention behind a foul is determined by the referee alone.

So what should have been a DQ win for Roger Bowling was now a NC. Fine. But to say that Trujillo should have not only won the fight but will be receiving a win bonus as well? Surely you’d have to be f*cking insane to utter such insanity.

Those shots were not illegal. The first one hit him in the chest, and the second hit him in the shoulder. That kid should’ve won that fight, and I’m going to pay him his win bonus.

Yup, that’s Dana White at the Fight Night 27 post-fight press conference (approximately 20 minutes into the above video), clearly high as f*ck. But here’s the thing: Dana is right.

So BG is gone this week, I assume to yet another wedding, because once he bought the tuxedo he was determined to get the mileage out of it. Seriously, he’s got the whole bit: natty little straight cane with the white tips, monocle, top hat, the whole nine. It’s dashing, but apparently it’s expensive as hell. That or he’s running some kind of scheme where he collects disposable cameras and plastic champagne flutes? What the fuck are you building in there, Goldstein?

So anyway, I’m poking around his office here at CP headquarters, kick over a box of CagePotato Hall of Fame t-shirts, and damn if i didn’t stumble over the ol’ arbitrariest of MMA supercomputers: the Potato Index.

Turns out it’s been hooked up this whole time, so I decided to pull up the numbers on UFC’s Fight Night 27, just for old times’ sake.

The Octagon Girls +16
The new Octagon Girls are lovely. Chrissy Blair is the archetypal California Girl; think Christie Brinkley in a Ferrari, but blonder. And the new brunette one getting tattoos exactly like Brittney Palmer’s was a nice touch.

Kansas City fighters + 42Zak Cummings [+19] and Jason High [+23] both picked up their first UFC wins with good-looking performances. Jason High had previously lost to Erick Silva in June and Charlie Brennamen back in 2010, mostly because Joe Silva likes to call High on short notice for not-easy fights. The Kansas City Bandit gets a big bump with a quick win.

Abel Trujillo +11
Trujillo picks up the best kind of No Contest: the kind that comes from a foul that is both uber-agressive and debatable. Attacking grounded fighters with knees will always stir the passions; if Trujillo were a savvy marketer, he would start coming to the cage in a Hannibal mask and a straight jacket. A straight jacket covered in sponsor patches. Dana White would get a visible boner.

Roger Bowling -5
Unfortunately, according to (arbitrary) opinion, it’s better to take the loss in the cage and get the NC declared later. But enjoy your short-term memory and normal brain function. (Pussy.)